Garden

During spring and summer here at Bread & Weather HQ, life moves from revolving around the candle studio (as it does in autumn and winter), to revolving around the vegetable garden.

It is very easy to work round the clock in a small business like mine, but I choose not to.

When the days start to get longer in spring, instead of staying in the studio with my nose to the candle grindstone — scheming, hustling and plotting world domination — I do something else.

I gently un-peel my grasping, millennial, claw from its urgent projects of optimisation and maximisation, go outside, and grow a lot of vegetables.

It’s the kind of setup that many people say they dream of, but it also encounters a lot blank, uncomprehending faces.

It’s possible that the internet has both romanticised and fetishised the simple habit of growing some food to the point of total confusion and occasional intimidation.

A lot of peculiar things pass across people’s faces when the subject of my vegetable garden enters the conversation.

It’s just vegetables

Growing some food is often represented online in extremes of either off-grid homesteading, or rich-person’s-plaything; something that can’t even be attempted without a either a Range Rover or a herd of goats.

Since I have a whole camera roll full of pictures, and it gives me such delight to share them, why not just show you what it’s like here?

What I grown in the garden

In a poly-tunnel 10m x 5m, and with about 9 raised beds and a menagerie of large containers outside, I grow all they typical small allotment regulars.

Starting with lettuce and spinach indoors in spring, as the rhubarb and asparagus begin appearing outside.

Summer brings cucumbers, courgettes, potatoes, beans, peas and strawberries.

And the prize of prizes — tomatoes arrive finally in late summer. 

Herbs, kale, beetroots, carrots, radishes and raspberries are sprinkled throughout. 

This year I have plans to add in some autumn/winter excitement with pumpkins and brassicas. 

What I do with what I grow

I eat it! Simple as that.

As someone who could easily win medals for anxiety in many other areas of life, it’s a lovely change to be on the opposite side of the scale in this area.

It doesn’t bother me too much if I grow a lot of something or none of something else, but it’s truly fascinating to observe people freak out that I might have planted too many or too few of anything from beetroots to lettuce. 

Urgent suggestions of farm-stands and chutney businesses tumble from their mouths. But I’m happy to eat tomatoes and courgettes every day in summer, and to have a freezer full of kale and spinach for winter. 

And that’s pretty much it

In true ‘internet fashion’ I could double down here in the last paragraphs with talk of micronutrient benefits and seasonality. Mediterranean diets and blue zones. Global warming and food security. Monocultures and pesticides. Wellbeing and capitalism.

All that does live in my consciousness. And I do eat more seasonally by being I’m in close contact with real plants. I do feel saner for living seasonally instead of per a 9-5 calendar. I do feel a tad less vulnerable to world chaos by having some healthy soil nearby. And I would indeed like to shuffle out to my garden to plant some beans when I’m 100.

But none of that is why I get out of bed filled with new energy in spring.

I do it for the process, not the result. For how good the tunnel smells the first time it warms up in spring. Or for how beautiful rows of peas look at golden hour. For the ludicrous miracle of a seed turning into a lettuce, or a carrot, or a tomato, all by itself.

I do it because there’s no holiday I could pay to go on that would feel as good as watering tomatoes, in bare feet and a raggy old t-shirt on a warm evening.

Tell me

Do you grow some food, or dream of doing it one day? Does it sound enjoyable or exhausting?
Would you like to hear more about the garden, or less?

If you feel like it, I’d love to hear from you.